[P] Take in the Extent of My Sin

[Only]

  

“ there are bullet holes where my compassion used to be ”

Step out of this cave and I'll make sure Florentine doesn't get to eat cake for her birthday.

Only has seen too many threats of Stephen's come to fruition to stop the moment he hears that cold, razor sharp voice interrupt his own thoughts.  Apolonia is not afraid, she is not passive either, gaging by the large axe she spins so easily at her side -- she is confident, actually.  "Ah,"  a genuine smirk wrings the fretful frown out, Only seems more relaxed with a smile, something that can rarely be associated to him.

"I am always up for a bit of a scrimmage."  He says against the wind - which takes his words and relays them back to her as it echoes back from the shell of the cave.  "Not with you, of course."  Oh, but why not? Stephen asks.  Only slams the door to the basement and turns back to her, nonplussed, and calm.  Time to switch gears, she has called his bluff and he doesn't need her to confirm it.  It might make him angry to hear it outside of his own head anyway.  The man rolls his midnight black shoulders and heads back towards the encampment slowly, casually.

"You got me, I am camping here but I got jumped hiking in.  That's all of their stuff."  A lie. Only is scared.  Scared that she'll tell on him, that she'll go home and tell someone about an outsider having come in.  If someone comes, Stephen will get mad.

If Stephen gets mad.
Someone will die.
Someone that Only cares too much for.
Someone he will lie, beg, cheat, and steal for -- even kill.

His heart tic-tick-ticks, qui-quick-quickly, but the lies are flowing smoothly now, like molten silver into its cast. 

"I have only just returned to Novus after my voyage at sea, I left after my incarceration."  True.

"I was just so eager to see all of Solterra, the dunes, the oasis, and this canyon was my first stop.  I have always hoped I could find my place in the desert." He means that, the gutter rat truly does by the way hope sparkles like foamy, frothing cyanide in his gold-green eyes.  

Or does he? 

The wind blows more feathers up, around, out, over .. gone.  

A shift of blond hair passes over those same eyes and reveals a different hand entirely,

a singular irregularity,

not quite insincerity, but neither serendipity the way he weaves his words together.  It is clear, now, that he has an agenda here regardless of what he has told her.  "Word on the wind has it that my queen is trapped here.  Isra?  Do you know her?  I do not." 

Mostly true. 

Only has forgotten about the third eye, the axe, the smarmy look on the girl's face -- all he can do is weave a web thick enough to black out Stephen's intentions.  Even if Only does not know Stephen's plan, it is Stephen who warns like a crow that Apolonia might.  Weirdly, he hears one (or thinks he hears one) cawing off in the distance.  His blood chills.

Do something to distract her, anything.  Only tells himself.

"Why an axe?"  Only asks then, his eyes sliding down the weapon with silent intrigue.  If there is anything both Stephen and Only can agree on, it is the appreciation of a finely edged blade.

O N L Y
and there is violence in my heart

 

@Apolonia